Dick DeVos explains the Green Machine, a product sold through a joint venture between Windquest Group and Pro Services.

The Windquest Group Inc. is partnering with a Portage company to offer companies clean-energy solutions — but they want those solutions to make good business sense, too.

“We felt this was an area of innovation,” said Dick DeVos, president of the investment management firm. “We also decided that there were plenty of people that were interested in the glitz and glamor of the environmental movement and were pursuing solutions that sounded really cool but, unfortunately, didn’t generate economically efficient solutions.”

Instead, the firm decided to look for environmentally — and economically — sustainable solutions businesses could use immediately.

It investigated a variety of innovations, many of which “fell by the wayside,” DeVos said. One product — the Green Machine — stood out to Windquest, which partnered with Portage-based Pro Services Inc. to bring the technology to Michigan manufacturers.

Pro Renewables

Read more about Pro Renewables and the Green Machine in the March 25 edition of Business Review West Michigan.

The Green Machine captures heat normally wasted in many manufacturing processes and recycles it to create electricity.

“Somebody has computed that one Green Machine can produce enough electricity from waste to power 20 homes,” said Chris Schauer, CEO of Pro Renewables and CEO of Pro Services.

Pro Renewables will distribute the Green Machine in seven Midwestern states, where manufacturing companies could benefit from the technology for a variety of reasons.

“The things that we’re being criticized for — that we’re industrial, that the Midwest is an industrial mecca — are exactly the characteristics that make the Midwest such a great potential marketing place for this,” DeVos said.

Those industrial facilities produce vast quantities of wasted heat. Plus, making the most of existing resources has become more important to manufacturers in recent years as they strive to improve efficiency.

“Frankly, what we’d like to see in the future is the opportunity for every organization that generates excess heat and waste in Michigan — and hopefully in the Midwest — to be looking seriously at this technology as a way to save money and improve their environmental friendliness,” DeVos said. “This is a double header for Michigan businesses.”

Pro Renewables wants to offer companies environmental solutions that are “economically sound without relying on tax credits and other interventions that could be here today and gone tomorrow” and are not based on projected energy costs, DeVos said.

DeVos has heard arguments for products that offer a return on investment once electricity rates increase in the next five or 10 years, but he doesn’t think that’s acceptable.

“If we’re going to sell today, these technologies have to offer economically sound investment proposal today,” DeVos said. “So that was the criteria.”

Purchasing and installing the Green Machine costs between $150,000 and $200,000, depending on the complexity of the installation. ElectraTherm and Pro Renewables estimate the Green Machine will pay for itself in four to five years. However, they point out incentives are available that can reduce that period to two or three years.

And once the Green Machine has paid for itself, it’s “going to be adding to their bottom line substantially,” DeVos added. And that investment improves further if electricity rates do go up in the future.

Although distributing the Green Machine was the catalyst for forming Pro Renewables, the company plans to eventually expand further, while maintaining a focus on renewable and/or alternative energy solutions.

“You’ve always got to be careful that you don’t over-promise and under-deliver,” Schauer said. “But absolutely, this is the first thing, and … we will be looking at new opportunities.”